Europe, the ambivalent super-democracy

Once upon a time, José Manuel Barroso was very outspoken – and very proud. The president of the European Commission declared that the new European Citizens’ Initiative would finally “bring more democracy” to Europe. That was in 2005, and Barroso used this argument at a speech in the Netherlands to promote a ‘Yes’ vote on the eve of the Dutch referendum on the ‘constitutional treaty’.

And, in the end, we got a new treaty, renamed the Lisbon treaty, and the fundamental principle of participatory, direct democracy – as a complement to indirect, parliamentary democracy on the EU level. It took another year for EU lawmakers to agree in December 2010 on a European Citizens’ Initiative procedure, which ever since then member states have been preparing to implement.

What are we talking about? The European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI), which was launched on 1 April, is the EU’s most comprehensive democratic reform since the introduction of direct elections to the European Parliament in 1979. It gives a direct agenda-setting power to EU citizens, if they manage to gather at least one million signatures from at least seven member states within one year.

There are aspects in this new ‘voting right’ that make Barroso’s initial outspokenness and pride understandable. The ECI opens not only the first direct constitutional channel of communication for EU citizens among themselves, but also a direct channel of influence between citizens and the Commission, which is the most important (and, formally, the sole) body when it comes to initiating new EU legislation.

And there is more to the ECI. It is the very first transnational instrument of direct democracy. It is also the first formal initiative process in the world that allows for the signatures to be collected electronically. So here we have a truly new mechanism for what we could call 21st-century iDemocracy. It is more direct, more transnational and more digital than anything we have had before. This qualifies the EU to be called the world’s first super-democracy.

Viewed from that perspective, we could have expected the Commission to launch a huge ‘communication campaign’, to set up a well-staffed call centre to answer citizens’ questions and to announce, with pride, the ECI’s launch with huge banners outside its headquarters. Almost nothing of that has happened.

True, there is a (very) small team of enthusiastic officials in the Commission’s secretariat-general who have navigated the ECI through the difficult preparatory phase. There is a website featuring a well-crafted tutorial, including truly fascinating open-source software for the e-collection process. In the form of Maroš Šefc?ovic?, it has a vice-president who has underlined at many pre-launch events that the ECI will become – in his words – a “game-changer” for European democracy. Finally, there is a small brochure available in all official EU languages explaining the ECI process.

All this is necessary, but far from sufficient. Most people in Europe – more than 95% – are still unaware of their new right to influence Europe directly. Most member states have yet to adopt the legal framework necessary for handling their part of the ECI process – the certification of online systems and the verification of signatures. And most officials at the EU’s central information services are still unable to answer even the simplest questions regarding the ECI.

As a consequence, the starting phase of the ECI has not been as democratic as it should have been, because only well-informed and well-established organisations and people have the necessary practical knowledge.

The responsibility for this failure to prepare Europe and Europeans for these new democratic times lies not just with Barroso and the Commission, but also with the Parliament and the Council of Ministers. Their silence and ambivalence towards the ECI does not befit an EU that is about to become the world’s first super-democracy.Bruno Kaufmann is president of the Initiative and Referendum Institute Europe. He has authored the “European Citizens’ Initiative Pocket Guide”, a user manual to the new right (europeancitizensinitiative.eu).